Forrester Research reported that 154 million people in the United States, approximately 67% of the online population, made online purchases totaling $155.2 billion dollars in 2009, an 11% increase over 2008 salesi. More importantly, $917 billion in retail sales were influenced by online marketing efforts last year. And the numbers are on the rise. Considering that 98% of your website visitors leave your site without convertingii, and, according to Forrester Research, 51-66% of your online customers begins but doesn’t complete an online purchase, you can see how great of an impact a behavioral retargeting email campaign can have on your bottom line. YouTube.com retargeting
Behavioral retargeting email campaigns use historical data, campaign, CRM, and clickstream, to build highly relevant messages that are delivered at the right point in the sales cycle. The idea isn’t new – web advertisers have been using remarketing and retargeting campaigns for years to ensure visitors receive appropriate ad content based on past search criteria. And as marketers continue to shift away from batch and blast to personalized, engaging messages, they are following these same concepts. Campaigns with relevant messaging based on subscribers’ interactions typically garner 30% higher conversion rates and prolong customers’ lifecycles, raise subscriber value, and increase overall profitability.
Retargeting Campaigns that Increase ROI
Shopping cart abandonment campaigns are extremely effective at recouping lost revenue. When
customers abandon carts, you know several things about them – you know which products they’re
interested in, you know they have a need, and you know they’re ready to purchase. This information
makes it very easy to reach back with relevant, beneficial messaging. Yet, in a recent poll including
200 of the Internet Retailer 500, only 14.5% have a shopping cart abandonment program in place –
resulting in a lot of lost revenue. The process has been proven to significantly increase sales. Movies
Unlimited, an online movie retailer, implemented an automated shopping cart abandonment program
that has an 11%+ sale conversion rate and returns a 28% higher average order value than its regular
email marketing programs. But it’s not the only retargeting campaign you should be running.
Replenishment campaigns are another type of email retargeting campaign that you should consider.
Like shopping cart abandonment campaigns, you know which products the shoppers are interested in
and you can estimate the buying cycle based on the average product life or past purchase behaviors.
These campaigns are extremely important in enforcing brand loyalty, as well as increasing customer
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03 lifetime value. When it’s time to restock a product, it is very easy for
shoppers to perform a simple online search and choose the lowest price
instead of returning to the retail site where they made the original
purchase. A lot of online retailers don’t do enough to differentiate their
product offerings and transactions from their competitors so in many
cases shoppers might not even remember where they made the original
purchase. However, if you send them an email at the time when they’re
likely in need of a product, say a week or two before your identified
purchase cadence; and you give them an easy way to repurchase the
item, the shoppers will have no need to search competitive sites. This
strategy not only generates additional revenue, but it lengthens your
customers’ lifecycles and increases their value to your organization.
Similarly, you could create a predictive retargeting campaign surrounding
cross-sell or upsell opportunities using your own purchase history data or a
product recommendation engine to create targeted, individualized product
alert messages. Because these emails are based on historical purchase
data analysis, the messages are extremely accurate and highly likely to
convert to a sale.
